As manager of Takeoff business incubator, what have you seen improve in our start-up landscape in the past few years? And conversely, what has not improved that much notwithstanding the work put in?

I was managing Takeoff between October 2014 and August 2016. In that time a lot of things changed and matured. First, there are now annual and well-managed seed fund initiatives, including the Takeoff Seed Fund Award, Games Fund, and MITA Innovation Hub acceleration calls. In addition Malta Enterprise has come up with multiple new initiatives targeting only start-ups.

Government is also offering strong support in the form of a seed investment scheme, which will help more start-ups find new investment.

Also, I can see a much stronger start-up community with events like EY exceptional speakers event, Heyday Events, Zest start-up conference and start-up leaders clubs like Silicon Valletta.

I believe that if such initiatives are kept up, we will have a new flow of start-ups. Many of ideas will fail, but collective knowledge and experience will sink in and eventually the ecosystem will become more start-up savvy.

What would fuel the local start-up scene?

I think the local start-up scene has taken off already in so many ways. The tricky part is how to keep the momentum. Start-up scenes have a sort of seasonality effect – at one moment there are a lot of new ideas seeking help and the next, there is a vacuum.

How can we accelerate business incubation and reduce the fear of failure?

I’m not sure it can be accelerated. Fearlessness and a business mindset take time to be cultivated. Also, they are partly due to culture and environment, which can only change with time. In the long term, a lot of education and a focus on the right mindset need to be emphasised. By education I’m not just referring to the knowledge of how to do things, but also social and soft skills.

Malta is on the right track – it just needs time for effects to kick in.

Soon one of these first wave start-ups will hit it big and they will have time and money to re-invest in Malta

Are local entrepreneurs sufficiently global in their mindset?

I have a feeling that thinking global is an attitude. I have usually spotted it in people who have travelled and seen a lot and who are curious about other places and traditions. These people have friends all over the world and know what are they competing against and the level of quality they need to aim for.

One way of encouraging global thinking is to be present at international competitions or events. Such an event could be European Innovation Academy. And luckily such a activities are already happening at Junior Achievement and Young Enterprise. Two years ago we piloted this approach when Takeoff and EC Language Schools supported a Maltese student team, winner of the ICTSA Million Dollar Idea business competition, to go through European Innovation Academy Accelerator. Today one of their members has already established Kwaver, a very successful globally thinking start-up.

I’m not saying that one led to the other, but I’m sure that exposure to that event might have helped. I think events like these open up opportunities and extend networks of local young people – it’s a necessity for global thinking. But it’s up to the community to find resources so that students can go out and network, because it will not be a cheap investment.

You hail from Estonia, a country which punches above its weight in the start-up world. How did Estonia manage to gain such traction and global visibility?

Estonia, as any other successful ecosystem, started from good fundamentals.

First of all, Estonia has many brilliant engineers. Strong STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education helped. Perhaps even the Soviet history – which left no legacy and forced people to start things from scratch and just rely on themselves – helped.

The second ingredient in Estonia’s recipe is a success story. In Estonia’s case the explosion came from Skype, Playtech and some other successful software technology companies. Suddenly there were people who had grown a company through many hardships to success and had vast amount of resources after exiting. This all amounted to experienced people with understanding of what to do next and with the money to do so. The same is happening in Malta – we can see the first wave of successful start-ups maturing, and most are driven by former employees of Uniblue, GFI and gaming companies. Soon one of these first wave start-ups will hit it big and they will have time and money to re-invest in Malta.

Thirdly, the Estonian government understood the potential and launched the Start-Up Estonia programme, investing millions into educational events and supporting ecosystem.

That said, Rome wasn’t built in a day – it took Estonia 10 years to grow to this momentum.

Ahti Heinla and Jaan Tallinn, Skype’s engineering co-founders, started a technology fund and invested in tens of companies. What could encourage local individuals and organisations with deep pockets to start looking at technology investing as an option?

I’m not sure that local organisations that don’t have the experience with fast growing companies should immediately jump to investing. The investment movement should start gradually from individuals who can syndicate with more experienced ones and learn along the way.

Some of their investments will fail. Hopefully some will succeed and they’ll be able to learn how to make the best choices.

You have recently co-founded your own venture, Thought 3D. What is the value proposition?

To clarify, I joined a very talented company at Takeoff, founded by Keith Azzopardi and Edward Borg. Throughout the incubation time at Takeoff we were able to support them and give a right direction. Among many inventions, the company decided to focus on a very well defined product, Magigoo, a 3D printing adhesive solving a big industry-wide problem.

The majority of fused filament fabrication 3D printers are finding it hard to deliver reliability when printing with various plastics, especially during longer prints or complicated shapes. Magigoo solves this problem by offering a very firm adhesion, but also providing a magical innovation – releasing prints easily after print is ready and cooled down. This is a big deal for the user experience and we are working on making sure everybody gets to know about this magical product.

On top of that Magigoo is possibly the only really seamless candidate to be used in educational settings. Magigoo is non-toxic, odourless and it’s really easy to apply – and this would make 3D printing workshops for children a breeze.

I’m happy to join Thought 3D on this journey and glad that after four years of managing different incubators and supporting hundreds of entrepreneurs, I can finally focus on one start-up and one industry with a great team.